Multimedia Documentary Assignment: Problematizing Gender, Race, and Nationality
Instructor: Michelle Comstock, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Colorado at Denver
Student Sample: Miku Rager, University of Colorado at Denver
Intro and Assignment Prompt: During the last several years, I've given my advanced composition students the opportunity to produce multimedia documentaries on a community figure, event, and/or place. Here's the prompt: Compose a documentary (utilizing at least two media) on a campus and/or community figure, organization, movement, event, or issue. You will address the documentary to an audience of your choosing (extra credit for publishing or distributing the documentary to this chosen audience). Also, you may choose to collaboratively compose the documentary with a group of one or more of your classmates.
Intentions: I wanted my students to have the opportunity to document (develop a point of view on AND "fully" represent) a subject, using field/library research and documentary filmmaking/writing techniques. I also wanted them to experiment with modes of meaning-making and representation. While they had the option to adopt a traditional, print academic essay format, it was just one option among many and perhaps not the best one depending upon their own intentions. Most importantly, I wanted them to look closely at a particular subject and at the same time create a social/cultural/historical context for it. (You'll see how Miku's student sample does this beautifully.)
What Really Happened: Honestly, the first semester (Spring 2004) I gave this assignment was rough! I brought in local expert documentary makers, and we created a step-by-step composing process. I also relied on documentary pedagogical materials created by Mary Hocks and Scott DeWitt and used books on documentary making by Sheila Curran Bernard (Documentary Storytelling) and Bill Nichols (Introduction to Documentary). But we didn't have a strong archive of student work. Now we do, and I attribute the current success of the assignment to a growing, vibrant gallery of student documentaries. Some have been published on documentary Web sites and others entered in digital arts contests.
What's Happening Now: Each semester, the students build on each other's work, raising the bar and amazing me more and more with their creativity and commitment. While I offer assignment materials here on the wiki and in the presentation, I know the essence of the assignment instruction is in the student samples themselves and in the hands-on, individualized tutoring sessions in my office and in the computer lab. The sample presented in the workshop by Miku Rager was composed that first chaotic semester--Spring 2004--and represents all the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the assignment. It's a complex, somewhat fragmented, powerful piece--both aesthetically and politically.
Caveat: There's no standard way of approaching this assignment. Each semester a multitude of variables (e.g., student interests, expectations, and abilities; accessibility of software and open lab hours; community events; campus climate; etc.) create new conditions for the composing and assessment processes. Also, the documentary assignment arrives at the end of the semester after a series of photo essays and assignments aimed at analyzing various media elements. Ideally, students will have a clear idea by this point how media elements might work together to create meaning for or connection with audiences.
Documentary Assignment Description (including evaluation criteria and schedule of assignments)
Documentary Scripting, Voice-over narrations, and Cultural Soundscapes
For a sense of how I use voice-over narration samples and assignments to help students script their documentaries and develop a cross-cultural perspective on their subjects, see the article Mary Hocks and I wrote for the Computers and Composition Online Special Issue on Sound in/as Compositional Space, guest edited by Cheryl Ball and Byron Hawk--go to article).
The article demonstrates how documentaries, like The Corporation (whose female narrator, Mikela J. Mikael, provides a juxtaposition with a mostly male series of talking heads) and Dark Days (whose director, Marc Singer, allows the participants to narrate their experiences in a kind of therapeutic relationship to the camera), allow students to hear and talk about the cultural and political strategies behind the voice-over scripts and performances.
Scripting Process
Here's more from that article: "Students' analytical skills become even more refined when they write and perform their own voice-over narrations. Before they add any images or text, I ask students to write a voice-over script, rehearse it with a peer review group, listen as someone else reads it aloud, revise it, practice it again, then record and digitize it in a sound booth on campus. After recording their scripts, students play the uncut version several times for themselves and others, listening for places where the piece drags or rushes, where the voice is "off" or "on." I also encourage them to splice in other voices, if appropriate, in order to challenge their (and the audience's) notions of the univocal narrator, as well as assumptions about who (what voices) should be allowed to say what. The students then rewrite the scripts, shortening sentences, packing in more information, and adopting styles and tones more appropriate to the narrator's inflection and range. Through this process they are testing and retesting their re-recorded spoken narratives on others, asking what tones and words resonate or grate. The digital sound editing programs allow students to easily eliminate and replace words, pauses, or background noise, facilitating a highly recursive editing process. As they begin to bring the sound files together with image and text files into a single document (video editing programs like iMovie and Windows MovieMaker allow students to combine these elements), we discuss sound as one element working simultaneously with the other elements to produce an overall effect. In other words, we ask if the voice resonates with the images (textual, photographic, and moving images), as well as with the audience, toward a gestalt. These questions require students to edit the voice-over narrations yet again in relation to the images and text."
Verbal Performance Feeds Writing Process and Visa Versa
"In [my] own experience, writing for voice-over narrations has helped me write for print. I'm more intimately aware of the vicissitudes of pacing and tone, of when to slow down and set up a scene and when to frontload the key conflict in a piece. Students say the same thing about their own writing and recording processes in their post-project reflections. As Miku's example will demonstrate, they discover firsthand--in an embodied, immediate way--just how difficult it is to write for one's own voice (or the voice of another) and achieve resonance with an audience, the subject, and the document as a whole."
My Response to Miku's Piece: "Voice and Cultural Soundscapes"
Popular Media and the Asian Female Voice
(From Computers and Composition Online article) "In 'Why I Don't Like My Accent,' Miku powerfully contextualized her own voice over and her "paranoid" (her words) self-consciousness of it within the larger cultural production of the Asian female voice. Using clips from Kill Bill and Full Metal Jacket, Miku demonstrated the synthesization and fetishization of the Asian female voice in the U.S. popular cultural soundscape, a voice attached to an eroticized, infantilized, and in the case of Kill Bill's O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), lethal body. Throughout the composition, Miku takes issue with Professor Higgins of My Fair Lady, claiming that certain individuals cannot 'conquer' or tame their own voices: 'I came to the U.S. when I was eighteen, so no matter how hard I try, how motivated I am, how great my teachers and their methods are, I cannot speak English without an accent so far. In fact, I've been trying for eight years, and I don't see significant improvement in my accent.'
Material Effects of Voice
Miku's piece points to the material effects of voice in our culture, where particular accents continue to possess more earning power than others: 'How much accent is too heavy?' she asks, 'How much accent am I allowed to have?' In the end, Miku decides to take on the cultural stereotypes and not her own voice. She chooses to resonate (and work) with her own voice as it is and teach others to do so, too. She concludes her documentary with brief portraits of Japanese women in the fields of astronomy and art. This is just the beginning, she suggests, of a 'lifelong re-education project.' These counter-images become part of Miku's own voice in the piece. They give her voice and voice-over narration a social and cultural capital and credibility that is missing in the stereotypes.
Voice-over Narrations and the Cultural Politics of Resonance
When we teach voice-over narrations, we focus less on technical details and more on the intimacy and immediacy created by the words, cadence, and tone of the voice(s). All of these qualities create what sound theorists call 'resonance'--the impact of one vibration on another. Resonance is also a metaphor in communication practices and connotes a listener-centric approach to production, one that takes into account whether the listener's auditory system, as well as experiences, will allow him or her to vibrate at the same frequency as one's words and tones. A voice-over narration, for example, asks students to engage in a particular form of sonic literacy, to consciously choose words and tones that resonate (or create dissonance) with an audience, as well as with themselves.
What the resonance metaphor emphasizes is the sharing of experience and emotion, not just ideas or knowledge. It is a metaphor that relies on modes of communication beyond print, such as music and images. Of course, just as no instrument can be completely in tune, no voice can completely resonate. There are levels of resonation, which are dependent upon cultural context and space. As Miku discovered firsthand, in order to achieve resonance, one must write descriptively and concretely, with special attention to emphasis. Various inflections and their effects become more obvious in voice-over narrations, their malleability a source of inspiration or just confusion. Both her documentary and reflective writing highlight her struggle to create a powerful, persuasive voice, a struggle many first-time multimedia producers share. The highly-edited, homogenous professional voices of mainstream media often have a silencing effect on our own, making it so we can't hear ourselves or other individual voices. Of course, as Miku also points out, whatever counts as the 'natural voice' is complicated by the cultural soundscape, and as Truax argues, 'Even our own voice comes back to us with the properties of the immediate environment embedded within it' (32). When students begin to recognize and produce resonance, and also recognize and use dissonance strategically, they become much more sophisticated communicators and critics of popular cultural soundscapes. These culturally-inscribed resonances and dissonances teach students to question the notion of the 'natural voice' and thus develop their critical sonic literacy."
Applications Used in Documentary Project
(Dependent Upon Students' Choices in Format)
i-movie or windows media maker (conducted workshop on i-movie)
audacity
photoshop (conducted workshop on photoshop)
word
powerpoint
IT Resources and Sustainability
The sustainability of this assignment depends on fostering the following campus and community relationships. (Not listed in order of importance.)
Computer Classroom: Each semester my chair and I negotiate computer lab space with the College of Arts and Media. This also requires a working, collaborative relationship with the lab coordinator, who updates the lab with the latest Mac computers, projection capabilities, and multimedia software applications. The classroom is open each evening for students to work on their projects, and another lab, which contains a sound booth, is open days and evenings. However, most of my students commute to class from their homes and jobs, so they end up using their home (often PC) computers and software to produce their documentaries. This has sometimes created compatibility issues. I provided optional introductory workshops on photoshop and i-movie for both students and instructors. I currently provide an additonal workshop on audacity and soundtrack pro.
Writing Center: I worked with the Writing Center director and consultants to purchase a Mac and multimedia software applications for the Writing Center. This computer station is available to my advanced composition students during Writing Center hours. I've also trained Writing Center consultants on responding to multimedia assignments, like the documentary. I ask a Writing Center consultant to join me in the classroom each semester. My students then go to that consultant for help in the Writing Center.
Media Center: The campus Media Center loans digital cameras and tripods to students for a flat semester rate of $15.00.
Technology Grants: Technology grants through my university's development office have provided digital recorders, a digital camera, and microphones, which I make available to students and instructors. These grants also allow me to offer development workshops on multimedia assignments and software for instructors. Several instructors have observed my class and collaborated with me in order to implement the documentary assignment in their own classes.
The Students: Because the students are enthused about their projects, they report this excitement to the chair and enter their work into campus/community contests and gallery showings. Their enthusiasm and the quality of their work inspire "buy-in" by my chair and the department. They ask for more access and resources and are heard by administrators.
My Chair: The current English Dept. chair supports the multimedia curriculum and student work and allows me to showcase their work at open houses and symposia. She also lets me consistently teach courses that include multimedia elements. This allows me create an archive of student work and an evolving curriculum over the course of years instead of weeks. Currently, she and I are researching future granting possibilities, so we're not so reliant on CAM.
Local Documentary Makers: Local documentary makers and educators in Denver, as well as the Center for Digital Storytelling in Denver, have provided invaluable multimedia instruction and resources for my students and instructors over the years. See the Computers and Composition Online Web site that my documentary student, Sarah Shirazi, and I created with our community digital literacy partners regarding some 2004/2005 collaborative projects.
The Center for Public Humanities: My colleagues and I are developing (through campus and CU system grants) a center with a community art gallery/lab in order to provide resources (equipment and instruction) for documentary production and publication for students and community members. The lab will be an off-campus community education site. Download CPH proposal.
Multimedia Documentary Assignment: Problematizing Gender, Race, and Nationality
Instructor: Michelle Comstock, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Colorado at Denver
Student Sample: Miku Rager, University of Colorado at Denver
"Why I Don't Like My Accent" (edited version) by Miku Rager.
Intro and Assignment Prompt: During the last several years, I've given my advanced composition students the opportunity to produce multimedia documentaries on a community figure, event, and/or place. Here's the prompt: Compose a documentary (utilizing at least two media) on a campus and/or community figure, organization, movement, event, or issue. You will address the documentary to an audience of your choosing (extra credit for publishing or distributing the documentary to this chosen audience). Also, you may choose to collaboratively compose the documentary with a group of one or more of your classmates.
Intentions: I wanted my students to have the opportunity to document (develop a point of view on AND "fully" represent) a subject, using field/library research and documentary filmmaking/writing techniques. I also wanted them to experiment with modes of meaning-making and representation. While they had the option to adopt a traditional, print academic essay format, it was just one option among many and perhaps not the best one depending upon their own intentions. Most importantly, I wanted them to look closely at a particular subject and at the same time create a social/cultural/historical context for it. (You'll see how Miku's student sample does this beautifully.)
What Really Happened: Honestly, the first semester (Spring 2004) I gave this assignment was rough! I brought in local expert documentary makers, and we created a step-by-step composing process. I also relied on documentary pedagogical materials created by Mary Hocks and Scott DeWitt and used books on documentary making by Sheila Curran Bernard (Documentary Storytelling) and Bill Nichols (Introduction to Documentary). But we didn't have a strong archive of student work. Now we do, and I attribute the current success of the assignment to a growing, vibrant gallery of student documentaries. Some have been published on documentary Web sites and others entered in digital arts contests.
What's Happening Now: Each semester, the students build on each other's work, raising the bar and amazing me more and more with their creativity and commitment. While I offer assignment materials here on the wiki and in the presentation, I know the essence of the assignment instruction is in the student samples themselves and in the hands-on, individualized tutoring sessions in my office and in the computer lab. The sample presented in the workshop by Miku Rager was composed that first chaotic semester--Spring 2004--and represents all the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the assignment. It's a complex, somewhat fragmented, powerful piece--both aesthetically and politically.
Caveat: There's no standard way of approaching this assignment. Each semester a multitude of variables (e.g., student interests, expectations, and abilities; accessibility of software and open lab hours; community events; campus climate; etc.) create new conditions for the composing and assessment processes. Also, the documentary assignment arrives at the end of the semester after a series of photo essays and assignments aimed at analyzing various media elements. Ideally, students will have a clear idea by this point how media elements might work together to create meaning for or connection with audiences.
Documentary Assignment Description (including evaluation criteria and schedule of assignments)
Additional Assignment Materials
(Most of the documents below are from the Spring 2004 course--I now use these guided worksheets as prompts for in-class online workshops.)Documentary Process Overview
Getting Started
Documentary Research Plan
Selecting Sources and Storyboarding
(storyboarding is a useful organizing device even for those producing print documentaries)
Storyboard Template
Documentary Peer Review Sheet
Documentary Reflection
Documentary Scripting, Voice-over narrations, and Cultural Soundscapes
For a sense of how I use voice-over narration samples and assignments to help students script their documentaries and develop a cross-cultural perspective on their subjects, see the article Mary Hocks and I wrote for the Computers and Composition Online Special Issue on Sound in/as Compositional Space, guest edited by Cheryl Ball and Byron Hawk--go to article).The article demonstrates how documentaries, like The Corporation (whose female narrator, Mikela J. Mikael, provides a juxtaposition with a mostly male series of talking heads) and Dark Days (whose director, Marc Singer, allows the participants to narrate their experiences in a kind of therapeutic relationship to the camera), allow students to hear and talk about the cultural and political strategies behind the voice-over scripts and performances.
Scripting Process
Here's more from that article: "Students' analytical skills become even more refined when they write and perform their own voice-over narrations. Before they add any images or text, I ask students to write a voice-over script, rehearse it with a peer review group, listen as someone else reads it aloud, revise it, practice it again, then record and digitize it in a sound booth on campus. After recording their scripts, students play the uncut version several times for themselves and others, listening for places where the piece drags or rushes, where the voice is "off" or "on." I also encourage them to splice in other voices, if appropriate, in order to challenge their (and the audience's) notions of the univocal narrator, as well as assumptions about who (what voices) should be allowed to say what. The students then rewrite the scripts, shortening sentences, packing in more information, and adopting styles and tones more appropriate to the narrator's inflection and range. Through this process they are testing and retesting their re-recorded spoken narratives on others, asking what tones and words resonate or grate. The digital sound editing programs allow students to easily eliminate and replace words, pauses, or background noise, facilitating a highly recursive editing process. As they begin to bring the sound files together with image and text files into a single document (video editing programs like iMovie and Windows MovieMaker allow students to combine these elements), we discuss sound as one element working simultaneously with the other elements to produce an overall effect. In other words, we ask if the voice resonates with the images (textual, photographic, and moving images), as well as with the audience, toward a gestalt. These questions require students to edit the voice-over narrations yet again in relation to the images and text."
Verbal Performance Feeds Writing Process and Visa Versa
"In [my] own experience, writing for voice-over narrations has helped me write for print. I'm more intimately aware of the vicissitudes of pacing and tone, of when to slow down and set up a scene and when to frontload the key conflict in a piece. Students say the same thing about their own writing and recording processes in their post-project reflections. As Miku's example will demonstrate, they discover firsthand--in an embodied, immediate way--just how difficult it is to write for one's own voice (or the voice of another) and achieve resonance with an audience, the subject, and the document as a whole."
My Response to Miku's Piece: "Voice and Cultural Soundscapes"
Popular Media and the Asian Female Voice
(From Computers and Composition Online article) "In 'Why I Don't Like My Accent,' Miku powerfully contextualized her own voice over and her "paranoid" (her words) self-consciousness of it within the larger cultural production of the Asian female voice. Using clips from Kill Bill and Full Metal Jacket, Miku demonstrated the synthesization and fetishization of the Asian female voice in the U.S. popular cultural soundscape, a voice attached to an eroticized, infantilized, and in the case of Kill Bill's O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), lethal body. Throughout the composition, Miku takes issue with Professor Higgins of My Fair Lady, claiming that certain individuals cannot 'conquer' or tame their own voices: 'I came to the U.S. when I was eighteen, so no matter how hard I try, how motivated I am, how great my teachers and their methods are, I cannot speak English without an accent so far. In fact, I've been trying for eight years, and I don't see significant improvement in my accent.'
Material Effects of Voice
Miku's piece points to the material effects of voice in our culture, where particular accents continue to possess more earning power than others: 'How much accent is too heavy?' she asks, 'How much accent am I allowed to have?' In the end, Miku decides to take on the cultural stereotypes and not her own voice. She chooses to resonate (and work) with her own voice as it is and teach others to do so, too. She concludes her documentary with brief portraits of Japanese women in the fields of astronomy and art. This is just the beginning, she suggests, of a 'lifelong re-education project.' These counter-images become part of Miku's own voice in the piece. They give her voice and voice-over narration a social and cultural capital and credibility that is missing in the stereotypes.
Miku's Reflections on Documentary Making Process
Regarding her own production process, [in her documentary making reflection response] Miku wrote about the difficulty of achieving resonance with her 'accented' voice (the very theme of her documentary). She claimed the project taught her a great deal about focus and 'flow' in her writing:
'I was originally satisfied with my first script. The script seemed to represent what I wanted to say in the manner I intended to. However, once I started to do the voice over my script became unbearable. There was no flow between the sentences. Awkward word choices and sentence structures suddenly screamed out from the text. When people would say words are alive, I would always think it was such a cliché. With this voice over, I experienced the life of words for the first time. And as a neglecting mother of an awful script, the fact scared me.'
Voice-over Narrations and the Cultural Politics of Resonance
When we teach voice-over narrations, we focus less on technical details and more on the intimacy and immediacy created by the words, cadence, and tone of the voice(s). All of these qualities create what sound theorists call 'resonance'--the impact of one vibration on another. Resonance is also a metaphor in communication practices and connotes a listener-centric approach to production, one that takes into account whether the listener's auditory system, as well as experiences, will allow him or her to vibrate at the same frequency as one's words and tones. A voice-over narration, for example, asks students to engage in a particular form of sonic literacy, to consciously choose words and tones that resonate (or create dissonance) with an audience, as well as with themselves.
What the resonance metaphor emphasizes is the sharing of experience and emotion, not just ideas or knowledge. It is a metaphor that relies on modes of communication beyond print, such as music and images. Of course, just as no instrument can be completely in tune, no voice can completely resonate. There are levels of resonation, which are dependent upon cultural context and space. As Miku discovered firsthand, in order to achieve resonance, one must write descriptively and concretely, with special attention to emphasis. Various inflections and their effects become more obvious in voice-over narrations, their malleability a source of inspiration or just confusion. Both her documentary and reflective writing highlight her struggle to create a powerful, persuasive voice, a struggle many first-time multimedia producers share. The highly-edited, homogenous professional voices of mainstream media often have a silencing effect on our own, making it so we can't hear ourselves or other individual voices. Of course, as Miku also points out, whatever counts as the 'natural voice' is complicated by the cultural soundscape, and as Truax argues, 'Even our own voice comes back to us with the properties of the immediate environment embedded within it' (32). When students begin to recognize and produce resonance, and also recognize and use dissonance strategically, they become much more sophisticated communicators and critics of popular cultural soundscapes. These culturally-inscribed resonances and dissonances teach students to question the notion of the 'natural voice' and thus develop their critical sonic literacy."
Applications Used in Documentary Project
(Dependent Upon Students' Choices in Format)i-movie or windows media maker (conducted workshop on i-movie)
audacity
photoshop (conducted workshop on photoshop)
word
powerpoint
IT Resources and Sustainability
The sustainability of this assignment depends on fostering the following campus and community relationships. (Not listed in order of importance.)
Computer Classroom: Each semester my chair and I negotiate computer lab space with the College of Arts and Media. This also requires a working, collaborative relationship with the lab coordinator, who updates the lab with the latest Mac computers, projection capabilities, and multimedia software applications. The classroom is open each evening for students to work on their projects, and another lab, which contains a sound booth, is open days and evenings. However, most of my students commute to class from their homes and jobs, so they end up using their home (often PC) computers and software to produce their documentaries. This has sometimes created compatibility issues. I provided optional introductory workshops on photoshop and i-movie for both students and instructors. I currently provide an additonal workshop on audacity and soundtrack pro.
Writing Center: I worked with the Writing Center director and consultants to purchase a Mac and multimedia software applications for the Writing Center. This computer station is available to my advanced composition students during Writing Center hours. I've also trained Writing Center consultants on responding to multimedia assignments, like the documentary. I ask a Writing Center consultant to join me in the classroom each semester. My students then go to that consultant for help in the Writing Center.
Media Center: The campus Media Center loans digital cameras and tripods to students for a flat semester rate of $15.00.
Technology Grants: Technology grants through my university's development office have provided digital recorders, a digital camera, and microphones, which I make available to students and instructors. These grants also allow me to offer development workshops on multimedia assignments and software for instructors. Several instructors have observed my class and collaborated with me in order to implement the documentary assignment in their own classes.
The Students: Because the students are enthused about their projects, they report this excitement to the chair and enter their work into campus/community contests and gallery showings. Their enthusiasm and the quality of their work inspire "buy-in" by my chair and the department. They ask for more access and resources and are heard by administrators.
My Chair: The current English Dept. chair supports the multimedia curriculum and student work and allows me to showcase their work at open houses and symposia. She also lets me consistently teach courses that include multimedia elements. This allows me create an archive of student work and an evolving curriculum over the course of years instead of weeks. Currently, she and I are researching future granting possibilities, so we're not so reliant on CAM.
Local Documentary Makers: Local documentary makers and educators in Denver, as well as the Center for Digital Storytelling in Denver, have provided invaluable multimedia instruction and resources for my students and instructors over the years. See the Computers and Composition Online Web site that my documentary student, Sarah Shirazi, and I created with our community digital literacy partners regarding some 2004/2005 collaborative projects.
The Center for Public Humanities: My colleagues and I are developing (through campus and CU system grants) a center with a community art gallery/lab in order to provide resources (equipment and instruction) for documentary production and publication for students and community members. The lab will be an off-campus community education site. Download CPH proposal.